The present disclosure relates to an ice dispensing apparatus and a refrigerator, and more particularly, to an ice dispensing apparatus and a refrigerator from which a desired amount of ice can be conveniently dispensed.
Refrigerators are used to store food or other items for a long time at a low temperature by decreasing the temperature using a refrigeration cycle unit.
In addition to use as a low-temperature storage, some refrigerators can be used to make ice using air cooled to below the freezing point of water and dispense the ice in the form of cubes or crushed pieces.
For this, an icemaker and an ice dispenser can be installed in the refrigerator, particularly, at a position exposed to a stream of air cooled at a freezer chamber. The icemaker makes ice using air cooled at the freezer chamber, and the ice dispenser dispenses the ice in the form of cubes or crushed pieces.
Since the ice dispenser dispenses ice to the outside of the refrigerator by pushing stacked ice pieces or cubes, it is difficult to predict how many ice cubes or pieces will be discharged from the ice dispenser. For example, when the ice dispenser operates once, no ice cube can be discharged from the ice dispenser, or three or more ice cubes can be discharged from the ice dispenser. That is, since the number of ice cubes discharged from the ice dispenser is irregular, ice cubes discharged from the ice dispenser to a vessel can overflow. Furthermore, it can take much time to receive a desired number of ice cubes from the ice dispenser.
Moreover, if many ice cubes are discharged through the ice dispenser, an outlet of the ice dispenser can be blocked due to a bottleneck, followed by malfunctioning of the ice dispenser. In this case, a motor of the ice dispenser can be overloaded, and thus the ice dispenser can be broken.
In addition, since a shutter is installed on an outlet of a chute coupled to the outlet of the ice dispenser, a number of ice cubes can be unexpectedly discharged when the shutter is opened to receive ice from the ice dispenser.